Pete Edochie: The Ojukwu I knew – Says Shakespeare had a great influence on the late Ojukwu

(Giggles) Yeah, indeed, I mentioned that I had known Ojukwu for a very long time and his entire life was a stage, just like William Shakespeare said that the entire world is a stage, and all men and women are mere actors; they have their exits; they have their entrances. Ojukwu saw the world as […]

(Giggles) Yeah, indeed, I mentioned that I had known Ojukwu for a very long time and his entire life was a stage, just like William Shakespeare said that the entire world is a stage, and all men and women are mere actors; they have their exits; they have their entrances.

Ojukwu saw the world as a stage and even while he was studying history at Oxford University in England, he found time to take part in Shakespearean productions.

Is that so?

Yes, he did. At the night of tributes held inside the main hall of Sports Club, Enugu a lot of people were talking about different aspects of Ojukwu’s life; how richly endowed he was. Ojukwu had a very engaging oratorical prowess. He could keep you spellbound when talking to you. He was a very articulate person; he was a very eloquent person, and he was the first graduate to enlist in the Nigerian Army, Ojukwu’s attributes are many.

But I did mention that after all was said and done, that Ojukwu was a human being; that Ojukwu loved women. As a matter of fact, I would describe him as H.G. Wells described Mr. Paully. H.G Wells said that Mr. Paully was congenitally disposed to the worship of women. Well, those words may sound harsh but I will describe Ojukwu like that. Ojukwu loved women with a passion.

How the love of Macbeth brought C.C. Onoh and I together

I said something on that day. I talked about Chief C. C. Onoh; Ojukwu’s late father in-law. I said that I was introduced to Onoh by chance. Somebody took me to the Sports Club, Enugu and bought me a modest drink. I had to rush that drink at a very modest speed because I didn’t have a guarantee that a second bottle would materialise.

Then somebody pointed to a man sitting just a few yards from me; shall I say, perched precariously on a bar stool. And he said, Pete, do you know that man? And I said no, I don’t. And he said, well, that is C.C.Onoh. I said, I see, the politician; I’ve heard so much about him. I mean I was raised in Northern Nigeria, so I don’t know much about the politics of the east. But I always heard about him, and I thought it was good getting to know him. So I watched him with some curiosity. He was also having a drink rather reflectively. And at a stage, he broke into a quotation from Shakespeare’s Macbeth. Onoh said, “Tomorrow, and tomorrow, and tomorrow/, Creeps in this petty pace from day to day/,To the last syllable of recorded time/…”

So immediately he got to that point, I chipped in “…And all our yesterdays have lighted fools/The way to dusty death./Out, out, brief candle!/ Life’s but a walking shadow, a poor player/ That struts and frets his hour upon the stage/And then is heard no more: it is a tale/ Told by an idiot, full of sound and fury,/Signifying nothing.” So the moment he (Onoh) discovered that I could join him in racing through that verse of Shakespeare’s Macbeth, he motioned me to come and sit down.

So I went and sat by him and he suggested I have a second drink. So he offered me one and said he trust that I would not disappoint him. I said I will not. We got talking. I mean, I wasn’t old enough to be his friend. But somehow, we started getting along from that moment. Progressively, the relationship grew.

I now remembered that on an occasion I was looking for an accommodation and I was asked to go and meet C.C., that he had a lot of houses. I met him, and he was willing to give me a house, no doubt; and he asked me one question: Peter, are you married? I said yes, sir. He said oooh! Too bad; if you were not married, I would have loved you to marry one of my daughters, so that at least when I come to your house we can share Shakespeare together. I thanked him and as at that time quite honestly, I hadn’t known the daughters.

But one day at Ngwo Park when F.G.N. Okoye was celebrating something, two girls came to greet me and they introduced themselves as Bianca Onoh and Sandra Onoh; they were in secondary school then. I noticed that those Onoh daughters were very pretty and very attractive. And it was Bianca that quickly caught my attention because she was fair-complexioned.

Like I said, Ojukwu loved Shakespeare a lot. I remembered aspects of Shakespeare that Ojukwu would quote. Ojukwu loved Richard III. And I said I was going to quote from three plays by Shakespeare that Ojukwu liked to read a lot. Ojukwu liked Richard III. Ojukwu liked Julius Caesar. Ojukwu liked Macbeth. So I started with Julius Caesar; I was quoting Mac Anthony when he saw the corpse of Caesar. Then I quoted Macbeth and I remembered when Macbeth and Banquo were coming back from the war front and they were accosted by the three witches. Then the other quote was from Richard III.

Ojukwu’s sibblings and his little known mother

At the end of the third quote, I began to tell the audience that I grew up in Zaria; how I met Ojukwu’s mother; how I went to school with Ojukwu’s half brother, Thomas Bigger and the half sister, Janet Bigger. Thomas Bigger was my senior. Thomas Bigger was Chukwuma Nzeogwu’s classmate, and he left St. John’s Kaduna, I think in 1958, before we came in 1960.

But it seems not much is known about Ojukwu’s mother?

(Long pause) Eeeem, not much actually…eeem Ojukwu; it was a polyandrous family…let me put it that way because…eeem…she was married, shall I say to two men, not quite at the same time; I think Ojukwu’s father had moved out before Mr. Bigger came . . .

(cuts in) Is that so?

Yes. But again you see, one thing about white people; if they want to write about you, they make all their enquiries. In our own case, we always think that not everything should be unearthed about somebody, right? There are so many families like that, you know and most great people actually are like that. Emeka Ojukwu’s mother was running a hotel in Zaria called Jubilee Hotel and it was situated at No. 19 Jubilee Road, Zaria. That was where Igbo High life musician, Celestin Ukwu and his band had started playing their music. My late senior brother taught Celestin how to play the Xylophone before he too died.

Yes, here in the Independence Layout where Ojukwu and I were neighbours, I occasionally went to him for a chat. Ojukwu could address you for one hour in Igbo without putting one English word. The toughness he advertised was merely a facade to create some distance between him and some people who admired him. Ojukwu at close quarters was a very beautiful, very understanding, and very accommodating personality. Ojukwu was such a fantastic host; Ojukwu was very hospitable.

If you go to his house, he would offer you anything you wanted, and he would bring it himself and serve you. Ojukwu was a very simple person. I remember on one occasion, when I went to cover the death of Dr. Nnamdi Azikiwe, I was heading a team of commentators and Ojukwu was not there. General Yakubu Gowon was there, and Alhaji Shehu Shagari was there but Ojukwu was not there. So I made enquiries and people told me that he travelled out of the country.

A couple of years later, I met Ojukwu in his house and I said, my General, I didn’t see you at Zik’s burial; I was told you had travelled out of the country. He said, Pete, I didn’t travel out of the country; I was here in the house. I simply wanted the Ojukwu mystique to keep growing, so that people would ask after me; and so I achieved what I wanted. I was the first person to go and see his wife in the hospital when I learnt that Zik had died, Ojukwu was telling me this. And I said ok.

How Ojukwu’s father saved Zik from assassins

A lot of people said there was no love lost between you and Zik; he reacted and said to me, have you ever spoken to Zik? I said I had. Then Ojukwu said to me, did you ask him his relationship with my late father? I said yes. He asked me what Zik said. I said Zik told me that when he was to be assassinated in Lagos, it was your father who saved him; so he was happy about it. I said Zik told me so many other things that your father and him were so close that it was your father who arranged for him to disguise himself, wearing Yoruba clothes and a Yoruba cap that Ojukwu’s father was waiting for him on the ground when he came down; he (Ojukwu’s father) took him into his car to Asaba, and paid five shillings for him to cross the River Niger into Onitsha. And that Zik told me that when he crossed into Onitsha, he went to the house of Sir Louis Mbanefo, who was namesake to Ojukwu’s father; and that night, the wife gave birth to a baby boy and in honour of Zik, Louis Mbanefo named his son Nnamdi. I later met the young man, he is a lawyer. I told him this is what Zik told me about you and he confirmed to me that his own father had told him a similar story.

[At this point, Edochie asked one of his aides to bring him a framed photo of Zik and Edochie.] I took this picture with Zik when I interviewed him in 1980. I just wanted you to see the picture.

Now back to Ojukwu. Emeka Ojukwu was a very pleasant fellow to deal with. Curiously, Ojukwu wasn’t obsessed with money. Ojukwu didn’t have money and he didn’t believe in chasing contracts and getting insulted in the process. No, Ojukwu was one Igbo man who had honour and believed very much in honour and he kept his head high till he passed on. I want to use this opportunity to thank President Goodluck Jonathan for according Ojukwu a state burial and reinstating his full military rights to him.

You know, at the end of the war, a lot of hack writers were tearing Ojukwu’s person to bits; ‘warlord, fought against his fatherland, trying to dismember Nigeria’. By the time Ojukwu died, all those rascals writing unscrupulous materials; they were compelled to eat their words. Why were they compelled to eat their words? Because Boko Haram was recreating the circumstances that led to the civil war; that even President Jonathan himself made mention of that. At the end of the day, they all came to agree that Ojukwu never started the war; Igbos were being butchered in various parts of the country, and had to run home to their place of origin; I was one of those people; I ran from Zaria.

And Ojukwu wanted us to ensure that whatever happened to us never happened again. Even so, when Ojukwu attended a conference either in Aburi, Ghana or Kampala, Uganda, I can’t remember now; he told the Nigerians look, I have said it before and I say it again, rather than comingle within an asphyxiating political atmosphere, why don’t we pull apart a little bit so we can breathe more easily.

But you know, the Nigerian delegation actually accepted that but by the time they got back, the BBC said Ojukwu had outsmarted the Nigerian delegation with his Oxford education; they were now compelled to renege on that agreement. Today, Nigerians are angling for a national conference; some say they want a national conference, others say they want a sovereign national conference.

I remember before Ken Saro Wiwa was executed during General Sani Abacha’s regime, Ojukwu told him what I saw 25 years ago, is what you are seeing now but unfortunately it’s too late. What Ojukwu advocated 45 years ago is what Nigerians are beginning to discuss today; so that if you say Ojukwu was politically clairvoyant, you will not be wrong. I’m happy that today Nigerians are obsessed with the need for a national conference.

If you ask my opinion, I will say there is a need for that; there is an urgent need for a national conference because the brand of politics we’re playing is threatening to disintegrate this country. Except we all come together and agree on specific issues on well-defined lines along which we must run this country, within which we must co-exist, the U.S. that predicted its disintegration may be vindicated.

Back to Ojukwu; what usually dominated your discussions with Ikemba Nnewi during your interactions with him?

You see, first of all, Ojukwu loved me a lot. He thought I was Nigeria’s greatest actor just like General Ibrahim Babangida said of me when he was interviewed. Babangida said, if I want to react to that one thing with Pete Edochie is that he is exceptionally good. I thank IBB for that compliment. Ojukwu paid me that compliment before Babangida did. We always discussed generally, and when he wanted to get into politics, he called me, we discussed it. Well, we talked generally and like I said, Ojukwu was particularly fond of me and I loved him a lot.

I learnt a lot about Nigerian politics from Ojukwu. He had the power to easily assess people’s character. He was a great human being in every sense of the word. If you sat in his presence, you would be awed by the charisma he exuded. I think we, the Igbo, borrowed Ojukwu at our hour of greatest need. At a time when the Igbo were welded together by adversity into a people with a common destiny, it became the unenviable lot of Odumegwu-Ojukwu to chart the cause of that destiny. It will be difficult for us to get another person like Ikemba and no Igbo man will be given the kind of burial that Ikemba got. In Nigeria, outside Nigeria, various parts of the world, Ikemba’s soul was honoured. He must be somewhere watching us and I think he would nod and say God, I think I did my best.

Sitting in Ojukwu’s presence was an honour; it was the same kind of honour that I always got from Zik. You know, I started mentioning Zik because a lot of people said he had problems with Ojukwu and all that.

Would you say that Ojukwu’s admiration for Shakespeare’s works influenced his world view?

To a very large extent; Ojukwu’s admiration of Shakespeare’s books determined his speech mannerisms, particularly when addressing people. If you watch Ojukwu speak, Ojukwu had some mannerisms dictated by the profundity of his oratory, you couldn’t but admire him for that. Ojukwu would cast an oblique glance to the left, and then cushion his jaws on his shoulders while making a point; that was the Shakespeare in him. So Shakespeare determined Ojukwu’s mannerisms a great deal and those who were close to him would know that his world was like a stage just like I said during the night of tributes.